The past periods of this tooth transplant research enabled me to examine experimentally tooth and root formation in autogenous transplants of a fibrous, hinged, ankylosed, or socket type of tooth attachment. The current and future direction of this project is to place emphasis on the more successful animal models. Since teeth migrating into a regenerating wound area of the jaw develop in a similar manner to those buds which are transplanted ectopically, work is to proceed on both areas of tooth growth and the tissues which comprise their environment. A major task will be examination of mostly anorganic preparations of normal and transplanted teeth, roots, and jaws with the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Normal teeth have at least five distinguishable surface areas in anorganic preparations. This number and appearance varies with the age of the adult tooth. The surrounding mucosa of the healing jaw wound will also be examined using the SEM. In addition to specific long-term transplant studies using successful models, the behavior and fate of tooth buds growing within the tail musculature of the catfish will be studied. Preliminary findings show enhanced growth at that site including growth of the bony portion of the tooth attachment. Finally, growth of regenerating teeth taken from jaw wounds and transplanted into the anterior chamber of the eye will be examined along with initial experiments of transmission electron microscopy of the epithelial covering of the root surface of the frog. It is hoped that more will be learned about the nature of the tooth attachment, the process of oral healing, and the relation of the tooth number and dental lamina morphology to success in tooth and jaw regeneration.